


they'll name a city after us

by bittereternity



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: #coulsonlives, Angsty Schmoop, Canon Compliant, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fix-It of Sorts, Introspection, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Swearing, Tahiti is a Magical Place, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, gratuitous description of clint's arms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 11:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittereternity/pseuds/bittereternity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint saves the world again and again. His hands don’t shake and every shot he takes is a work of art, every choice he makes is to give someone another breath, another day, another year. Clint saves the world again and again, but the world doesn't save him back.  [post-avengers, compliant with agents of s.h.i.e.l.d.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	they'll name a city after us

A loss, but who still mourns the breath/ of one woman, or laments one wife?/ though my heart can never forget,/ how, for one look, she gave up her life.

-          Anna Akhmatova

*

“Forgive me,” Phil says and there is a gun in his hand and blood on his lips. In front of him, Clint’s lips are pursed, one eye closed and every inch of his being focused on his target. In two point five seconds, he’s going to shoot, Phil knows.

“Forgive me,” he repeats again because this is important and Clint hears, _of course_ he hears. “Will you forgive me?”

Clint’s shoulders tense. _Two seconds. One._

Nock. Draw. Release.

*

It takes eight months before Phil sees him again. It takes eight months and days of incoherence and intensive physiotherapy. It takes eight months and a new team and almost getting his head blown off before he sees him again.

“Sir, backup is on its way,” Ward’s voice is distorted in his ear. “Stay put, sir,” he repeats a little breathily. A pause and he tries to  move his lips to form words, make a sound, do _something_ but there’s something warm and liquid trickling down his back from where a part of his skull used to be, and the gaps between his teeth are filled with blood. He tries to look down at the odd angle of his shoulder, at the cable ties digging into his arms. He should try to dislocate his thumbs, he knows, get his hands the hell out of the cable ties except a wave of  fatigue washes over him, threatens to engulf him.

“Sir,” a voice in his ear again and it’s different and _oh,_ it’s Simmons, “talk to me. Say something, sir. Talk to us.”

And he wants to, god does he want to. He wants to tell her to never stop looking for joy in the work she does, that it was an honor to work with her. He wants to talk to the others too, because not everyone gets a second chance at dying and he's already died once without saying anything useful. And they might be a strange team that doesn’t quite know how to trust each other or take care of themselves, but they are _his_. This has to be important, has to mean more.

(A group of extraordinary broken people who want to make the world just a little bit better with him at the helm, believing in heroes.)

He hears a crash in the distance and multiple footsteps that get louder. He wants to open his eyes, it’s only polite after all, to look into the eyes of the people so eager to kill him. The footsteps stop abruptly in front of him and  someone swears, _fuck, sir_ , and he makes another attempt to open his eyes, sees nothing but swimming black spots in an expanse.

Someone goes around him to examine the back of his head except it no longer hurts; everything feels blissfully insensitive and light and he’s this close to ignoring Simmons chattering in his ear – _keep still, sir, they’ll get you out –_ and all of a sudden, the ties digging in his arms are gone.

A voice shouts near him, _I’m not a damn doctor, Johnson, just be on stand-by right fucking now okay,_ and the next thing he feels is a strong pair of arms around him, fingers callused at the edges where they brush against the bruises on his skin, arms that don’t shake, lift him with tense, practiced ease, and this has been done before, this has happened before –

“Oh my god,” Skye’s voice abruptly replaces Simmons over the comms. “Holy shit,” she exclaims far too cheerily considering the situation, “it’s Hawkeye.”

Phil wants to take a deep breath,  tell her that that doesn’t make any sense but that would take so much _effort_ and it feels so good to be pain-free and soaring high and high above, and he’s so tired of being so _tired_ —

 _Ah, fuck_ , he thinks instead, and then doesn’t think anything at all.

*

He wakes up in a sterile room, all cold and sharp corners and a generic bouquet of flowers that he’s pretty sure is from S.H.I.E.L.D. HR.  Beside him, May looks like she’s half-asleep on a chair that looks highly uncomfortable. He clears his throat, and a fresh wave of pain spreads through his chest and arms, but at least the effort doesn’t make him want to pass out. It’s a win, if chooses it to be.

“Still not dead, huh?” he murmurs, testing his own vocal chords. He sounds scratchy and subdued, but he can hear himself. Beside him, May stirs at his words and turns around.

“Turns out, you’re ridiculously difficult to kill, sir,” she says.

He tries to raise his head up but that proves to be too much of an effort, and he surrenders. “So I’ve been said,” he falls back on the bed and pinches the bridge of his nose before looking at her properly. “You’re okay? You and Ward made it out fine?”

She nods. “Most of the machines were at the north-east end of the warehouse, the part where you ventured towards. Skye tracked your location and warned us to get out before they got to our end. We had to wait for backup before proceeding.”

“Good,” he lets out a deep breath. “Good, that’s good.”

May looks at him with a small frown. “They had seventeen armed snipers surrounding the perimeter that one corner. We had to wait a while to fly more eyes in before we could make it in.”

He closes his eyes briefly. “And the MTHEL prototypes?”

She looks down at her hands for a second before tilting her head to look at him more closely. “We almost lost them,” she speaks carefully, in a tone Phil can’t quite understand on her, “but we got them back at the last second. We had some help.”

A pause. “Fitzsimmons are going through the data right now. We should have an update in a few hours, max.”

Phil tries to shift but no position is comfortable. He lifts one of his hands, ignoring the slight trembling of his fingers, and tries to assess the damage. The minutes before he lost consciousness feel like a blur of images, none quite specific enough for him to remember. He looks up and May is still in her chair, looking at him intently.

“What?” he finally asks.

Her lips twitch but it’s not really a smile, an expression like a trick of the light passing through her face before vanishing completely. “You have a visitor, sir,” she says. He frowns when she doesn’t elaborate, simply makes a wide gesture with her hands and looks around, almost like she expects him to suddenly appear from the cei-

 _Oh._  

Not for the first time, he forgets to breathe.

*

Phil fell in love in the middle of a war in Bangladesh, during protests in New Mexico, off the coasts of southern Spain, on the cobbled roads of northern Scotland. But before, but before –

 

“There’s absolutely no way I’m letting you land on top of a burning truck,” Phil’s voice was firm.

“Come on sir, live a little.” He had no difficulty picturing Clint’s shit-eating grin on the other end.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do, Barton,” his voice was dry. “Making sure that you actually  _live_  a little longer.”

He could hear Clint’s huff of frustration before he took a deep breath. “Okay, look,” Clint replied patiently, like he was a five-year old with a huge sign that said  _handle with care_  on his forehead. “I’m never going to get close to them until I actually, you know,  _get closer._ We need the recordings, you said that yourself, and considering that they only set fire on the trucks on this side of the road, I’ll bet you that they’re destroying back-up evidence.” A brief pause and Phil could hear a shuffle, like he was flexing his hands –  _damn it._ “We need to get their recordings if we want to override their securtiy codes, sir. Let me go.”

Phil fiddled with a button on his suit, the only outward sign of his frustration. “Barton, listen to me very carefully,” he gritted his teeth. “We are not sending you on what is clearly a suicide mission. Do me a favor and stay put right where you are and keep an eye out for incoming perpetrators.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Clint replied immediately, in a tone that suggested no respect at all, “there’s no point in continuing to stand by and crack our knuckles while they give us the metaphorical finger.”

“You don’t crack your knuckles on a mission,” Phil reminded him blandly. “It throws off your grip.”

“For the love of,  _sir,_ ” he could practically hear the curses that Clint was no doubt uttering under his breath. “Just give me a fucking order.”

Phil opened his mouth but before he could say something, there was a commotion outside the van, yet another fireball hurtling towards the truck at the far-right.  _Shit,_ he heard Clint swear a moment later, and right at the corner of his vision, he saw a tiny speck of a man taking flight from a tall building, hurtling directly towards the trucks threatening to disintegrate in flames.

“Stand down, Barton,” he repeated incessantly even as he knew it was too late, there was nothing stopping that downward fall, no Hulk in sight to catch him. It was supposed to be a walk in and out mission, merely the gathering of intel. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. It wasn’t supposed to end with Clint on the other side of the glass, one step closer to burning every second.

He closed his eyes and quickly reopened them. And then, in a very rare move, he blinked.

Clint was still falling, but he had managed to stabilize himself mid-air, an arrow nocked and ready to go, waiting for the correct angle of the truck. Phil watched with barely restrained fury as he drew back and released the arrow, watched as it hurtled towards the fire in full speed and he closed his eyes and braced against the inevitable explosion on impact and then, and then—

The arrow hit the floor of the truck, angling towards the left and Phil got one look at the clip attached to the side of the arrow before it struck the ground, exploding in a burst of water, seeping through and overwhelming the flames. A couple of seconds later, Clint landed on the opposite side of the truck, knees folded to his chest against the impact with solid ground, rolling over to the other end and drenching himself in the process. For the next few seconds, he heard nothing but silence over the comms, punctuated by sharp gasps and heavy breathing.

“Barton?”

A few seconds of silence and then a laugh at the other end, euphoric and breathless and all kinds of hoarse, “Sit back and enjoy the show, sir,” Clint laughed.

*

Watching Clint practice at the range was like watching strings of prose falling together and creating a verse. He owned the range from the moment he walked in, confidence in every turn of his head, every flex of his muscle, every clench of his jaw. The junior agents, the other people training parted for him easily, yielded every time with a mutual, unspoken gesture of respect. Watching Clint with a bow was like following the trajectory of a raindrop as it fell to the ground, like the world around him had readjusted, narrowed down to the swishing sound of his arrow as it hit its targets, always, _always_.

Clint made it rain with his arrows, with the intensity in his eyes before every shot, with the slight smile at the corner of his lips, there for anyone who cared to look deep down enough to _see_. Clint made it rain all around and the universe yielded.

It was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating, watching him shoot. At times, it felt like a privilege, to be able to observe his stance, the curves of his arms and the tautness of his abdomen, to look at the arrow in his hand and feel like he was getting a glimpse of what was inside.

Nock. Draw. Release.

Watching Clint shoot was like peering into an abyss only to return with tales of beauty. He was so busy watching Clint in those stolen moments, he would think later, away from the chaos of the world around them, that when he fell in love, he didn’t see it coming at all.

*

“Thought you might be on the roof,” Phil says lightly in the general direction of the feet dangling from the ledge. Clint stands up and his eyes widen before he frowns deeply when he takes in Phil’s appearance. He still feels pretty much like shit, an arm in a sling and the weight of the bandages throughout his arms and chest make him feel heavy. And the large bandage wrapped at the back of his skull is, well, annoying really.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” he replies.

It hurts, the combined bruises on his ribs and arms and, well, _everywhere else_ , but—

“I upped my morphine,” he replies, looking pointedly at the IV pump attached to his arm.

Clint doesn’t look convinced. “You shouldn’t be out of bed,” he repeats.

Phil sighs. “I heard you rescued the prototypes,” he says softly. Clint barks out a laugh, and it’s ugly and all wrong, because he’s never heard Clint laugh forcibly before, has never heard him do _anything_ under force, except, except - 

“That wasn’t the only thing I rescued,” his tone is bitter, and maybe that’s changed too, the biting honesty in Clint’s words buried under layers of bitterness and distrust. _I did that_ , he realizes all over again, and the pain in his chest this time round has nothing to do with being stabbed.

“About that,” he tries to say as lightly as possible. “Since when do you go on rescue ops?”

“I don’t,” Clint replies. After a second, his shoulders sag. “Not normally, anyway. I was… in the neighborhood.”

“In the neighborhood?” he echoes.

“Fine, Agent May called in a favor. I was on my way back from a mission and she asked if I would take a detour.” He shuddered vaguely, like it’s a memory that’s left behind an unpleasant taste. “Son of a bitch,” he breathes out, “I had no fucking clue it was _you_.”

Phil tries to laugh. “Sorry?” he offers, but it’s weak, always weak.

Clint shakes his head and goes back to the edge of the roof, swinging his legs outwards and plopping down on the concrete. He hesitates for a second before following.

“I might need a little help,” he gestures towards himself, setting the IV pump beside him. Clint turns around, extending a hand that he grasps a little too lightly – _calluses on index and ring fingers, thumb littered with small scars, remember, remember –_ and sits the best he can.

Clint breaks the silence first. “You’re alive,” he exclaims, a note of reverence creeping into his voice. “You’re fucking alive.” It should be a statement of celebration, but there’s no joy in his voice.

“Guess I am.”

He turns to look at Phil. “And telling me would’ve--”

Phil looks down at his hands. There are a hundred reasons on the tip of his tongue and none of them matter. “It was need to know,” he says finally.

“Of course,” and there’s the laugh again, short and bitter and piercing the silence. “Fuck, sir, I _mourned_ you.”

Phil closes his eyes.  “I’m not your boss anymore,” he says instead, “you don’t have to call--,” trailing off at the look on Clint’s face.

“You were _dead_ and now you aren’t,” Clint repeats the words like he’s feeling them out on his tongue, testing their implications in between his teeth. _You were turned and now you aren’t,_ Phil can’t quite bring himself to reply.

“I love you, you know,” he says instead. It isn’t a declaration, not up here in the chilly wind of a rooftop, not in between all the words they haven’t touched, not on the top of a building shrouded in darkness. Here, it’s nothing more than the truth.

A corner of Clint’s mouth lifts up in a wan smile. Phil looks at him and expects to see disappointment, he looks and looks and sees nothing at all.

“I know,” Clint replies, his voice soft, resigned, brittle and Phil hates that too, hates that he has shattered that last piece of the puzzle, “I love you too.”

Phil tries to speak but replies stick to his throat. _We’ve never said these things out loud_ , he sort of wants to scream and yet his mouth closes back with silence. _Shouldn’t it matter more? Shouldn’t it_ change _something?_

“I still believe in heroes,” he finally tells Clint, staring ahead at the clear, black sky stretched out in front of him, trying to hear the faint rustle of the leaves illuminated by the stars.

Clint tilts his head and for a brief second, Phil wonders if he’s not going to reply at all before he breaks eye-contact and rubs his face with his hands.

“There are no heroes here, Phil,” he replies, and stays silent for the rest of the night.

*

 (Clint’s world is blue and sharp, and Loki’s voice is in his ear, a ceaseless string of words, light and stinging: _how does it feel,_ he asks, _to look down upon the world you’ve just destroyed,_ and he nocks arrow after arrow, shoots to kill someone else’s child and burn someone else’s world until everything collapses in ashes in front of him. Clint’s world is in the aftermath, in pulling himself up from the remains with debris beneath his fingernails and the voice of a stranger flowing through his veins.

 _How does it feel_ , Loki asks him, eyes alight with fire and adrenaline rushes through him, the taste of victory on his tongue in _so_ sweet, just within his grasp, and the old, familiar thrill of watching his arrow marks its target burns low, deep  in his stomach. He wants to reply but the words are bruises on the inside of his cheek, gone in an instinct when he grinds his teeth in concentration.

 _It feels majestic,_ he does not say.

 _In the end, you will always kneel,_ Loki’s laugh is true, terrifying, words he chants are ingrained in every fiber of Clint’s being. _Presumptuous much?_ Stark will laugh later but Clint’s been there, he doesn’t doubt any of it at all.)

*

Back then, back before it all ended:

“They’re not getting along,” Fury said in frustration, pacing up and down the length of his office as Phil stood near the window, silently observing.

“They’re at each others’ throats,” Fury’s voice was a low growl. “At this rate, they’ll kill each other before we even  _get_ to the Tesseract.”

He turned around, two of his fingers tapping inside his trousers. “We have to give them a cause,” Fury muttered under his breath, almost to himself. “We have to give them a reason to  _fight_.”

Phil stayed silent. All he could see was an order in his ear, sharp and desperate and just a little panicky –  _Barton’s been turned –_ and turning around to watch him leave, eyes blue and piercing and brimming with -- nothing. All he could remember was looking at him and finding him staring back, looking back with empty, expressionless eyes filled with the hatred of another man, devoid of all memories of being himself.

He took a step forward and sat down on one of the chairs opposite Fury’s desk and cleared his throat. “I have a plan,” he said.

*

 No one told him how hard it will be, he will think later, to love a man who aims at your heart. Harder still, to trust that he won’t set you on fire.

*

He goes to find Clint at the range the day they’re ready to leave, a day after he’s spent five consecutive hours with upping his pain meds. It's a little victory, and he takes it because they are so hard to come by.

“Didn’t think you’d still be here,” he remarks from the door, watching Clint spread out his arrows neatly.

He turns around. “I leave tomorrow,” he shrugs. Phil looks at him, watches the back of his neck as he bends over his bow, veins rippling through his forearms. Watching Clint is absolution, a reinforcement of his worth, his existence. Phil’s never quite seen someone like him before, someone who wears his scars on his arms, open and bare for anyone to see, who uses bits of his past as his armor, comes back stronger every time he is drowned, stronger and more powerful and _kind._ It’s sheer brilliance, to look at him and trace his belief in second chances, to look at him and feel like his chest is expanding with something that feels a lot like hope. Clint is a good man, has been a good man always, long before he was ever taught how to, long before he had any reason to be.

“Forgive me,” he blurts out the words before he can understand them.

Nock. Draw. Release.

Clint stops abruptly and this time when he turns around, Phil lets him _see_. He matches his gaze and lets him look beyond the immaculate suit and tie, beyond the bruises on his arms and the cut on his lip and the small patch at the back of his head that has been shaved  in order to stitch him up. Phil lets him see in a way he doesn’t understand, can’t bring himself to describe. Clint’s eyes reflect his being and it’s like looking into a mirror and being exposed; raw and scratched and vulnerable to flaws.

Clint closes the distance between them in three steps and kisses him, the feel of his chapped lips on his own harsh and soft at the same time. Phil smiles into the kiss, leans forward to encircle Clint’s wrists, his pulse trapped beneath the weight of his fingers, steady and present and grounding.

“”Go save the world,” Clint tells him finally, breaking apart to whisper in his ear, a soft breeze of words that settle in his spine. He presses his mouth to Phil’s cheek and draws him in for a brief kiss, and Phil closes his eyes against the feel of his lips on his skin, the warmth of Clint's space clashing against his own.

Phil closes his eyes and breathes in the moment, opens them again only to find himself alone, in the middle of a range with no one left to shoot.

*

“Tahiti is a magical place,” Nick Fury told him, and yet everything about it was empty. Too many smiles, all teeth and far too open, and too many hands on his shoulders congratulating him on being alive nd reminders to continue with therapy.

They called it the place of dreams but it never rained, not once. Somewhere along the way between unspoken words and unsigned Captain America cards, he and his dream had died side by side, fingers tightly clenched, lips parted open. 

*

 _I don’t believe in the concept of deserving,_ Clint used to tell him, _what you deserve has no impact on anything._ And he would shift uneasily under Phil’s gaze, at the slightest bit of incomprehensible sympathy seeping at the corners of his eyes.

 _But you believe,_ Phil used to reply, sweeping a hand around them as a substitute for words he couldn’t enunciate. And each time, Clint would turn around to look at him fully. _I believe because it’s better than the alternative,_ he used to say with a note of finality in his voice.

*

(And he’s spent far too long living in the alternative, in between the highs and lows of blood on his hands and the shake of the ground beneath his feet, never quite able to run away, escape from the pile of skin and bones he’s left behind.

 _You  have heart,_ Loki will tell him in a future he would never dare dream of, and the blood on his hands would spread, the skeletons will grow and come out of the shadows and tug at the visceral pain in his chest. And in the corner of his mind, Loki will laugh and laugh and _laugh-_ )

(We are all trapped in the present, caught between the embers of the past and the visions of a false future behind our eyes. We are all shaped by the things we choose to run away from.)

*

The call from Director Fury comes in the middle of the night, a month after he's cleared to be back on the field.

“Giant owls have been dropping bullets in public places in five locations in France,” he says as soon as Phil picks up the phone, in lieu of a _hello._ “Some of the ammunition has shown weak signs of radioactivity.” He pauses like he has to catch his breath and then, “ _Fuck,_ Coulson, we may have a mass nuclear threat in our hands.”

Any remark he was about to make dies on his lips. “Did you call in the Avengers?”

Fury huffs. “ _Of course_ I did,” he replies and pauses long enough to make him frown. “I want you on this, too.”

Coulson frowns. “You want the _team_ to work the case? This really sounds more like Stark’s area of--”

“No,” Fury interrupts with a deep breath. “No, I want you on location. I want you to coordinate from base and go over the strategy with Hill.”

 “Sir, I have a team now. I haven’t… done that in a long time.”

Fury’s huff of impatience is blatant, even over the phone.  “I need you on this case, Coulson,” he bites out. “Don’t make me say it twice.”

There’s more he wants to say. _It’s not my job anymore, get someone else to play babysitter, I can’t just leave my people in the middle of—_

He covers his face with his fingers and tries to breathe through them. “Okay,” he repeats. “Okay.”

*

Clint saves the world again and again, and his hands don’t shake and every shot he takes is a work of art, every choice he makes is to give someone another breath, another day, another year. Clint saves the world again and again, but the world doesn’t save him back.

The truth is: this matters.

The truth is: this changes nothing.

*

Clint takes a bullet to the ankle while trying to ward off a giant-sized owl from eviscerating the Arc de Triomphe, a science experiment gone too wrong, released to the unsuspecting public too fast. Phil turns back towards him, ignoring his claims that he’s alright, it’s just a graze, it’s _fine_ and runs towards him, warding off the chasing bullets raining on all of them. Chaos is all around them, civilians trapped under debris of what used to be buildings, shards of glass and metal sticking to their feet.

“Forgive me,” Phil shouts over the sound of death and there is a gun in his hand and blood on his lips. In front of him, Clint is raising himself up on one knee, lips pursed and one eye closed and every inch of his being screaming for vindication. In two point five seconds, he’s going to shoot ahead, Phil knows, take down a target.

“Forgive me,” he repeats again because this is important and Clint hears, _of course_ he hears. “Will you forgive me?”

Clint’s shoulders tense. _Two seconds. One._

Nock. Draw. Release.

“Why do you keep asking me that?” Clint yells back, sending an arrow piercing through the eye of an incoming owl.  They’re both quiet for a second, watching the owl lose its course before landing haphazardly on a tree.

“I have to know,” he raises his voice to reply.

Clint is already moving a step ahead, dragging his injured ankle behind him, back straight and eyes alert, scanning for the next target. He spares him a quick glance, waits calmly as Phil finishes guiding the next batch of civilians to relative safety.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he shouts over the mass of voices surrounding them and Phil feels, feels – heart thumping against his ribcage and fingers wrapped tightly around his gun, trying their best to save lives, standing side by side and back to back – feels free.

*

The last time they kissed, Clint had just returned from an undercover op in Unknown Location #41, appearing in front of him from seemingly nowhere when he went to the break room to get coffee.

Phil looked at him appraisingly, taking in the minor cuts behind one of his ears. “Did you even debrief?”

Clint’s smile was all teeth. “Almost?” He moved a step forward to place both his arms on Phil’s shoulders, trapping him to the counter. “I wanted to see someone else first.”

He pretended to stir his coffee. “There are rules for a reason, you know.”

“Ah, and here I was, thinking that I was going to receive a warm welcome.” He tilted his face away from Phil, kissing the corner of his ear. “Was I missed?” his voice was a whisper.

Phil closed his eyes. “Who says I missed you?”

“Really?” he whispered in Phil’s ear, voice warm and smooth and sending a shiver, a sensation of pleasure through his arm. “I hope you aren’t lying,” another kiss on his neck and Phil placed the mug down on the counter before leaning into it, “because liars will be,” his lips trailed upwards towards Phil's chin, “tickled to death.”

Phil smiled, leaning into his touch a second longer before straightening without any previous warning. He grasped Clint’s forearms with his hands, taking advantage of the surprise flickering on his face to flip their positions. He held Clint’s arms, bringing his hands to his chest and taking a moment to appreciate the arch of his back, the vein pulsing in his neck. He leaned in, taking pleasure in the way Clint’s eyes fluttered shut automatically before kissing him on the mouth, trailing his teeth gently over Clint’s upper lip, reveling in the warmth of his breath, the quickening of his pulse.

“You should still debrief,” he said a moment later, a half-hearted attempt at catching his own breath. Against him, Clint laughed, the beautiful, uninhibited laugh that was rare to hear, like it was plucked out of him while he was unaware, like  an unsung melody previously undisclosed, like the applause at the end of act one.

“Shut up, sir,” Clint laughed around his mouth and kissed him again.

*

In Paris, in the aftermath of a large-scale devastation scarcely avoided, in the silence of tremulous peace, Phil says, “I’ve never been on top of the Eiffel Tower before.”

It’s a lie. They’ve both been here, before. They’ve both been through this story before.

Clint pretends he doesn’t know. “I hear the view’s amazing,” he replies, tracing his fingers over his newly plastered ankle. “Good thing we saved it from being blown up, huh?”

Phil clasps his fingers and rests them on his knees. “I hear there’s an elevator,” he says, glancing at his leg. “If you’re curious about the view, that is.”

(This is the whole point in getting a second chance at dying, you get to tweak your own ending. You get to write a post-script.)

Clint looks at him, eyes half-closed against the sunshine and lips twitching slightly at the corners. “I could give it a try,” he says.

Phil tries not to look too pleased, tries not to let his smile burst forth. “That’s nice,” he says, and can’t quite bring himself to hate the tremor in his voice. “Shall we?” he stands up and extends his hand.

Clint takes it.

*


End file.
